


Subtle Beyond Belief

by Nawyn



Category: Perilous Gard - Elizabeth Marie Pope
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Established Relationship, F/M, Phone Calls & Telephones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 18:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20376199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nawyn/pseuds/Nawyn
Summary: Kate has a new shirt on when her boyfriend FaceTimes her. Christopher reacts calmly and sensibly, of course.





	Subtle Beyond Belief

Between the preparation for a match, the stress of competition, and the exhaustion after winning or losing, Kate usually had to be content with three or four minutes on the phone with Christopher when the debate team traveled. Normally she minded the briefness; now, of course, on the one night when she’d have been glad to say _hi, you’ll do fine, I’m good, I love you, bye,_ her phone screen lit up with a FaceTime request. At least Gwen wasn’t in their room; she cringed at the thought of talking with Christopher in front of anyone else, almost as much as at the thought of asking her moody roommate to leave for a few minutes.

She hit accept and propped her phone up against her computer stand to give her at least a prayer of a good angle. Christopher, she saw at once, had made even less effort; he sat curled into a corner of what looked like a common room couch, his phone held out in front of his face. He looked more tired than usual; the lighting somehow made the dark circles under his eyes look even larger. She felt herself grinning at the sight of him anyway. “This is a surprise,” Kate said. “Don’t you usually have prep to do?”

“The bus broke down halfway to Hatfield,” said Christopher. “We did sample questions while we waited for repairs, and by the time we actually got here, I kid you not, we’d finished all the prep that Geoff had for us. So I thought I’d treat myself to an actual sight of your face.”

Kate scowled, partly to poke fun at him and partly because even after half a semester together, she still didn’t quite know how to handle the fact that _Christopher Heron_ thought she was worth looking at. “Well, your timing’s atrocious,” she told him. “Gwen’s been in a bad mood all day, I have an essay for Ascham due tomorrow, and I swear Dean Green’s going to expel _me_ if Alicia sneaks herself onto campus one more time.”

Every word of it was true, but the tight knot of worry in her stomach loosened a little when Christopher laughed. “She can’t expel you,” he said. “There’s no law against having your sister visit you. She just likes to freak people out.”

“And she’s good at it. I gave Gwen my green jacket, I can’t even wear it anymore without thinking of her.” Her stomach growled; she’d snatched a roll from the dining hall and beelined back to the dorm to work on Ascham’s essay, but clearly it hadn’t been enough. “Hang on,” she said. “I’ll be right back, I just need to raid my food stash.”

“Heaven forbid ten minutes go by without Kate Sutton eati— _what the hell is that?”_

Kate froze in an absurd attitude, one hand stretched out to the box of ramen on the top shelf of her bookcase, half in and half out of her phone camera’s frame. “Food,” she said, her hackles already going up at Christopher’s tone.

“Not _that_,” he said. She glanced back at her phone; he’d sat up straight on the couch, and was leaning so close to his phone that his face filled her screen, an even less flattering angle than before. “What in the name of normality is that _shirt_ you’re wearing?”

_Oh, for the love of God._ She’d bought it the summer before freshman year in a fit of determination to remake herself in college, and then promptly lost her nerve every time she thought of _wearing_ it in public. Gwen had seen it in her closet last week, when Kate had given her the green jacket. “Nice top,” she’d said, peremptory as usual, but Kate had taken it to heart. Somehow Gwen always managed to look fantastic, even in sweats and an oversized shirt; praise from her had made Kate think that maybe she could pull off a bronze silk brocade corset-style top that buttoned down the front and pinched tight enough to produce actual cleavage. She’d put it on after devouring her roll, just to see how it felt; it had felt good enough that she hadn’t wanted to take it off.

“I like it,” she told Christopher now, feeling her cheeks get warm.

He was staring, eyebrows drawn together, as if he wasn’t quite sure who she was. “I’ve never seen that shirt before,” he said.

“Of course you haven’t,” Kate snapped. “I’ve never worn it before.”

“What’s wrong with the shirts you normally wear?” he demanded. “I like the one with the book written on it.”

She gritted her teeth. Gwen wouldn’t have had this problem; she’d just have shrugged and gone to microwave her ramen. Alicia would have known how to make it into a harmless little joke, or maybe even would have worn it well enough that no one, not even Christopher, thought it worth commenting on. “It’s not a _book_, technically,” she said stiffly. “It’s _The Tempest._ Litographs has printed plays on shirts for years.” She jumped up the few inches she needed to grab the box of ramen. “Look, I’ll change when I get back with my noodles, all right?”

“I didn’t say that!”

He sounded more alarmed than she’d ever heard him. Kate dropped the ramen onto her bed and turned back toward her phone, arms crossed, a glare ready to go. It could have been a trick of the lighting, but Christopher looked concerned. The image shook as he shoved his free hand through his hair, leaving it a mess of tawny curls half-standing up. “I’m sorry,” he said. He’d gotten so much better at apologizing than he’d been a year ago; he actually said the words now, instead of talking around them and thinking she’d read his mind. “It’s… well, it’s a nice shirt. I was just surprised by all that.”

“All what?” she asked, feeling better, but still awkward.

That was not a trick of bad lighting. That was Christopher Heron blushing over FaceTime. “All… you know… normally you’re much more…” He scowled ferociously, one hand waving out of frame around his chest. “You’re not usually all propped up on a platter, Sutton!”

Kate’s jaw dropped, and she burst out laughing.

From the glimpses of Christopher’s face that she could see through eyes narrowed and watering with laughter, he didn’t think it was nearly as amusing as she did. “Sorry,” she gasped, shaking her head, “it’s just – your _face_ – oh my _God_, Christopher, I was _not_ expecting that!”

“Tell me about it,” he grumbled. “_Warn_ me next time.”

She thought for a second as she caught her breath, eyeing the phone camera and the distance. “All right,” she said, praying Gwen stayed in the computer lab a little while longer. “Consider yourself warned.”

“Kate?” Christopher sounded panicked; she heard the couch creaking as he shifted his weight, saw the image on her phone screen darken as he pulled the phone closer to him. “Kate, I’m in a common room, what the hell are you doing?”

“Nothing,” she said innocently, and nearly collapsed laughing again when he looked back at his phone. His eyes actually widened so much they rounded out. She’d pushed her desk chair away and propped herself up on her elbows to let her phone camera look straight down her top. “Please tell me the entire Elvenwood debate team isn’t right behind you,” she said, hoping he couldn’t hear the nervous quiver in her voice and knowing he probably had. She’d never done anything like this before. It was the top, she decided, and the person she felt like in it, who would do things like aim a camera down her cleavage to let her boyfriend see. Or else it was a combination of the top and Christopher’s reaction to it. Or maybe it was the belated remaking of herself she’d wanted and never known how to pull off. Whatever it was, it was new, and new things tended to scare her in direct proportion to how much she wanted them.

“Luckily, no,” Christopher said with enviable dryness. Then he spoiled his casual façade by actually licking his lips, and Kate had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning like a lunatic. “You’re cruel, you know that? I won’t be back until the weekend. How am I supposed to concentrate on debating Hatfield with _this_ image in my head?”

“You’ll think of something.”

“Oh, I will,” he said fervently. “I’ll think of a _lot_ of things. What was it you said? ‘Consider yourself warned.’”

Kate grinned. Someday she’d really have to tell him that intense!Christopher was one of her favorite Christophers. “Can’t wait to hear about it,” she said, and was rewarded when he took a breath so sharply that his nostrils flared. “I really do have to make my ramen, though, I’m starving.”

“Kate, it’s FaceTime, not a landline. Take your phone. Besides,” he said, smirking, “there’s something really appealing about ‘Kate Sutton in the kitchen with cleavage down to there.’ In a caveman kind of way.”

He’d definitely heard the uneven giddiness in her laugh, and the weird thing was that she didn’t even mind. “Wait until I start eating the noodles and smack myself in the face with them. That’s peak sexy right there.”

“As if you could be anything else,” he scoffed, and grinned as evilly as she had when he saw how far her blush went.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken, very sarcastically, from the last page of the book.


End file.
